Chapter 11
Bonnie knew she ought to sleep. It had been one heck of a day, and she was sure her body could use the rest. Exhaustion soaked into her bones, but the idea of going upstairs and getting into the bed she used to share with Peter made her heart sore.
Back in Albany, she’d been sleeping in the guest room because it was too painful. She supposed she could do the same here. There were plenty of rooms to choose from, after all. But she knew there weren’t sheets on any of the beds except hers. The first thing she did every season was air out all the sheets and make all the beds; the prospect of doing it now felt daunting.
So instead, she curled up on one end of the couch and watched the storm unfold. The rain kept pelting the window, and every once in a while, a slither of lightning would flicker over the horizon, throwing shadows past all the trees in a few short bursts. Then the rumble would roll through, thunder echoing against the nearby peaks.
Eventually, the rain slowed to a gentle drizzle. Bonnie slid the glass doors closed, latched them, and faced the prospect of going to bed alone again. It wasn’t any more appealing than it had been half an hour earlier. She didn’t want to go to one of the guest rooms, either. She wanted to feel close to Peter again.
More than anything, she wished she could talk to him again. He was the person she would lean on when she was troubled or scared. She would have loved to lay all of the turbulent feelings she’d had today at his feet, knowing he would have said exactly the right thing to make her feel better again. If Peter were still there, he would have watched the storm with her in quiet companionship. He would have been her anchor and held her steady through everything.
But it was impossible for him to do those things when he was the reason she felt so unmoored. She ran the risk of crying again thinking about it. Like she’d told Jackie the day of the funeral, she had cried. Of course she’d cried. For the first twenty-four hours after Peter had died, she did everything through a steady stream of tears that rivaled tonight’s storm. Then Jackie and James arrived, and everything happened so swiftly.
There had been paperwork and decisions, and she needed to be strong for her children. Now that she didn’t need to be strong for them anymore, she ran the risk of falling apart completely. The trouble was, there would be no one to put her back together. Bonnie had to be strong for herself now, or she would be lost.
To ease the heaviness on her shoulders and try to soothe her aching heart, she wandered through the house looking for traces of Peter. Their bed was too close, perhaps, but there might be other places in the house where she could sneak up on his memory without it pulling too tightly around her chest.
She stopped at his home office. If anywhere in the house was full of Peter, it was this room. It was safe because it wasn’t a room she’d spent a lot of time in while he was alive. It was his sanctuary at the lake house, his place for perfect solitude. The kids weren’t allowed inside, and Bonnie didn’t care to go in. She wanted to leave work back in the city, so her compromise was to pretend as though the office didn’t exist.
She eased the door open, bracing to be surrounded by hundreds of new reminders of Peter—things that were unmistakably his, no matter how unfamiliar they were to her. She had to close her eyes immediately because the smell of him hung in the air. His cologne clung to the furniture like he’d only just stepped out of the room. Bonnie inhaled greedily, reveling in the closeness.
It was exactly what she’d been hoping for.
It stung a little, knowing this was the last time she’d discover anything new about her husband. It was the last place of his that was still untouched. But she doubted there would ever be a time she needed this closeness more than this moment.
The furniture was similar to Peter’s den back in the city but in lighter-colored woods. The desk was similarly sturdy, and the few chairs in the room were imposing and thickly upholstered. But this room had an airier feel that came from being on the lake. The windows were huge, nearly stretching from the floor to the ceiling on two walls. The rest were crowded with bookcases. There were books on the shelves, but also knick knacks galore.
Peter and James had built a number of ships in a bottle together over the years. Bonnie spotted them all lined up in a proud row right where Peter would see them if he looked up from his desk. That put a smile on her face. The evidence of his love for his children was clear as day.
On the shelf next to the model ships was an assortment of macaroni portraits Jackie had made one summer, interspersed with a handful of braided friendship bracelets she’d made the following year, and a number of bead animals from the summer after that. For all the time Peter spent working hard for the kids, it was clear he cherished the time he had spent with them, too.
Bonnie wished the kids had gotten to have their father for longer, but seeing this room, she was glad they’d had any of him at all. It made each one of those summers at the lake more precious to her. Somewhat comforted, she wandered through the room, running her fingers over the spines of his books and picturing him working behind the desk over the years.
One of his old sweatshirts was tossed over the arm of a chair. Bonnie shed her bathrobe so she could pull it over her head. The hit of Peter’s cologne on the material was stronger than in the room itself, and she took a moment to wrap her arms around herself, surrounding herself in as much of Peter as she could. It was hardly all the comfort she craved, but it was better than sitting alone and cold in the living room or wandering the Albany house forever.
Her exhaustion was still nowhere near strong enough to lull her into sleep, so she walked behind the desk to sit in his chair. The surface of the desk was tidy, which didn’t surprise her. Peter never left anything out of place if he could help it, so a stray document on the surface of his lake house desk would have been cause for alarm. But there were more files here.
Thanks to her conversations with Charles, she knew not to look for a life insurance policy. But she couldn’t help going through the drawers anyway, on the off-chance that she’d come across another scrap of her husband. The first drawer wasn’t much of a bounty. There were pens and pencils, a few stacks of sticky notes, and an old stapler. Everything had a specific cubby, which made her smile. No detail was too small for Peter to organize.
Of course, that made their financial ruin more perplexing, but Bonnie supposed it was possible he’d gotten too caught up in the little details to notice the big picture slipping away from him until it was too late. Thinking about that wasn’t getting her any closer to sleep, though. It would only work her back up, so she put the thought out of her mind.
The next drawer was an even bigger disappointment: it was entirely empty. The one below it held nothing but copy paper and replacement ink cartridges for the printer. All of it was so practical and impersonal, and Bonnie almost regretted opening the drawers at all. But there were a few more to check before she gave up and hauled herself to bed. Maybe there would be some forgotten relic—a note he’d left himself and forgotten to throw out, or a birthday card he’d stashed away and forgotten about.
Bonnie knew it was late, and it was foolish to hope for something like that, but what better time for foolish hopes than the middle of the night? It was the time for dreaming, after all. Spurred on by that thought, she opened the second-to-last drawer. It was more full than the last, but no more personal.
Inside were envelopes, a roll of stamps, and a three-by-five index card with the WiFi password written on it. It seemed so silly and frivolous a thing to make her smile, but the sight of Peter’s handwriting on that note was exactly the kind of thing she’d been hoping to find. It was an innocuous, casual part of their daily life, but it was a sign he’d been there. They’d had a life together, and it had been good. She needed evidence of the good days to carry her through the mess she was in now.
Heart a little lighter, she turned to the last drawer of the desk and opened it. She took a deep breath, her nose buried in the collar of Peter’s sweatshirt, filling her lungs with the familiar calming scent of wood and spice with hints of citrus.
Inside the drawer was a single manilla envelope. The top was sealed with a sticker of a rose on the closed flap. Her heart beating a little faster, she pulled it out and turned it over. She gasped, her eyes welling up with tears. She couldn’t believe it—it had been in the very last place she could have looked, but it had been there.
In Peter’s beloved, familiar handwriting, was her name.
He’d left her a message after all.